In the early afternoon, we said goodbye to Puerto Natales, and to Chile, and boarded a bus for El Calafate, Argentina. It was advertised to be a six hour drive, but after all the hard work we’d done in Torres del Paine, we were both pretty excited to have a down day of just sitting on a bus, relaxing, and reading.

About an hour in, we arrived at the border… and there was no electricity. We were told we would have to wait, and the electricity should be back in about two hours. Two hours?! Good thing we were very, very relaxed about it being a travel day.

Once electricity did come back, crossing the border was a breeze. Like, almost too easy. Neither migration agent—neither the one for Chile, nor the one for Argentina—said a single word to us. Just a passport scan, stamp, and we were off on our way. Hasta luego, Chile!

Bienvenidos, Argentina!

The ride from there to El Calafate took forever, and with the delay at the border, it was pretty late when we got into town. We made the short walk from the bus terminal to our hotel, and quickly asked where we could find food, and if it’d be too late. It wasn’t, she assured us, but we needed to hurry! We dropped our things off and set off into town, and went to the first place we found: a great bar and brewery called La Zorra. The beer was… well it was okay, but the food was great, and even better: both were cheap!

Perito Moreno

The next day, our only plan was to see the star attraction of El Calafate: Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, and most especially, Perito Moreno glacier. There are tour groups that will charge you a ton to drive you in a van to the park and drive you around, but by far the cheaper option is to use one of the bus companies that leave from the city bus terminal to the park, and then come bring you back 5 or 6 hours later.

(Actually, the cheapest option–suggested by Lonely Planet, no less!–is to take advantage of so many people going to the park and to hitch hike your way there. We saw people doing this too, standing in town holding signs to the various places they wanted to go. We opted for the bus.)

The ride goes through beautiful landscapes on its way into the park. On arriving, you stop, pay a fairly hefty fee, then continue deep into the park where the Perito Moreno glacier is hiding.

The bus dumps you out at a… visitor center? Not really, as there’s just a restaurant there. At any rate, a building! From there, there are numerous well maintained walking paths that go up and through the hills and around to about as close as you can get to the glacier. They’re seriously really impressive facilities.

We looked at the trail maps when we got there, and saw there were only a few miles of trails over the whole area. Awesome, we thought, we have hours before the bus comes to pick us back up, we’ll knock all of these trails out! Well…

Yeah, we weren’t going anywhere fast. Erika’s knee had a little too much Torres, and was all done now.

That morning, when we were looking at buses to take us out here, there were some that left you there for six hours, and some that just left you there for five. We thought, my god, how much time could you possibly need to stare at a glacier? So we opted for one of the five hour stays.

Then we spent hours basically sitting in one place watching the glacier calve.

Perito Moreno is one of the only glaciers on earth that is still advancing. But as it grows down the lake, and sits there all day baking in the direct sunlight, fissures open in the ice and chunks of the face break off and fall into the lake. Big chunks. Like, 10-story building sized chunks. The glacier towers at 240 feet above the surface of the lake, so these pieces that break off are massive. They make wonderful sounds when they do, and leave giant splashes in the water.

It was mesmerizing.

While we were sitting transfixed by the calving glacier, a couple struck up a conversation with us. Funny enough, they were also long-term travelers! Our numbers are large. They’re taking it somewhat… differently than us, however. They bought a van off Craigslist, did a little work on it so it could carry their bikes and kayaks, and have been driving it and living out of it. They started in Alaska, and now here they were talking to us at the other end of the world, in Patagonia! We were pretty stunned. Talking with them was great; we did so for a while, traded Instagram handles (naturally), then started our walk back to the ‘visitor center.’ We had a decent ways to go, and I had a gimpy wife.

Before we’d left the ‘visitor center’ earlier, we’d used the restrooms in the restaurant, and were planning to do so again before getting on the bus. Except… the restaurant closed at 4pm? And now the restrooms weren’t reachable. Great. We saw a number of other people frantically searching around the area and making the same realizations. And so, just 24 hours in to our time in Argentina, it was already time for us to pee outside!

A Much Needed Off Day

A few hours from El Calafate is another Patagonian landmark, full of glaciers and hiking and outdoorsy stuff: El Chaltén, home to the massive Mount Fitz Roy (fun-fact: Fitz Roy is the mountain whose silhouette is in the logo of Patagonia clothing company). We’d spent all of the previous day trying to come up with strategies for day-tripping to El Chaltén to do a short-ish day-hike to see the mountain:

• Let’s get on a bus first thing in the morning, hike, then get on the last bus back!
• Let’s rent a car in the morning, drive there, hike, then drive back late!
• Let’s rent a car tonight, drive up, hike in the morning, then drive back!

Then Erika limped around Perito Moreno all day, and these ideas were all well and truly dead. We were taking the day off.

And God, we needed it. So we slowly walked around town in the morning, taking pictures of flowers, and enjoying some of the most beautiful weather we’d had in a while. Then Erika took a long nap in the hotel room, while I went to a local cafe to start writing the massive blog post on Torres that I foisted upon you all last week.

I got a coffee, looked around for a place to plug in my laptop, then across the cafe I see someone I think I recognize.

It was Jeanmarie. Of “Jack and Jeanmarie” fame from Torres del Paine.

She came over, and we spent some time catching up. She was working (people still do that apparently, who knew!), and was hunkering down in El Calafate for a few days while Jack finished doing the O-trek in Torres (yeah, he did the W, then immediately turned around and did the whole O. I don’t get it either). We made plans to get together for dinner, and I got down to business pounding out pages and pages of Torres prose. That cafe was where the magic all happened. You’re welcome!

We met Jeanmarie that night at La Zorra for our last meal in town. We had a wonderful time talking about travel experiences and plans. It looked like we might end up in Mendoza around the same time, and we hoped that we would!

What’s Next

The next day, it was time to end our Patagonia adventure, and head back to a big city. A huge city. Buenos Aires! See you then!